Here's more Seth stuff, and its possible interpretation in terms of some of the notions I've advanced in earlier posts. But before I get into that, I want to clarify what I'm doing when I play around with ideas like these.

It's not that I think I can come up with The Answer, the absolute truth about the nature of reality. I doubt that any human mind is capable of conceiving such a thing, and I'm sure mine isn't. And I'm suspicious of those who claim to have worked out a Theory Of Everything, no matter how elaborate it may be. I also recognize that any model based on present-day technology is likely to appear antiquated in the future, when that technology is obsolete.

Nonetheless, I do find it useful to come up with a model – however flawed – that allows me to make sense both of a variety of phenomena (psi, the paradoxes of quantum physics, and other things) and of testimonies from purportedly channeled entities, especially those that seem intellectually serious. If a given model allows me to integrate this material in a way that is fairly coherent, then it helps me to understand these phenomena and these claims. That doesn't mean I've actually penetrated to the real truth of the matter, only that I've found a way to have it make sense for me.

Moreover, if it makes sense, I'm much likely to treat it seriously. For instance, I'd never thought much about the Seth material before, because I just couldn't make head or tail of it. I had read parts of it, but it didn't mean much to me. Seth might have been speaking, but it didn't feel like he was speaking to me. However, now that I can interpret these communications in terms of the model I've been sketching out, they are starting to seem more meaningful. And this is personally valauable to me, though it may not be valuable to other people who are not enamored of this model or who already feel they understand Seth perfectly well without it.

With that in mind, here are some selective quotations from chapter 7 of Seth Speaks. The quotations are selective because a good deal of what he says either is irrelevant to what we've been talking about, or might possibly contradict it. (It's hard to say.)

Your physical form is the result of great emotional focus. The fantastic energy of your psyche not only created your physical body, but maintains it. It is not one continuous thing, although to you it seems permanent enough while it lasts. It is nevertheless in a constant state of pulsation, and because of the nature of energy and its construction, the body is actually blinking off and on.

Now: This is difficult to explain, and for our present purposes it is not entirely necessary that you understand the reasons for this pulsing; but even physically, you are "not here" as often as you are here.

For my part, I would understand this as follows: The physical body, like any other physical thing, is rendered as a multisensory, multidimensional image by a render engine, using the data that exists in N-space. The resulting images exist in our own personal M-space. The rendering capability is (perhaps) a feature of consciousness itself – "the fantastic energy of your psyche." As such it is distinct from the "cosmic CPU" (Thomas Campbell's term) that handles the information processing problems in N-space.

This is not very different from an actual computer, which uses a CPU to run the program but uses a GPU, or graphs processing unit, to do the rendering. Admittedly, I'm simplifying, since there's more involved in computer rendering, but the point is that the equations necessary to work out the position, momentum, etc., of an object are different from those used to render it, and the work can be performed by different processors.

Note that the "constant state of pulsation" of the physical body, and presumably of all other physical things, is consistent with our idea of the "virtual-reality screen" that is constantly refreshing. Remember that, in our model, the screen is M-space, a mental projection personal to each individual. What I render in my M-space may not be what you render in yours, because you may not be looking at the same things I'm looking at. However, if we're both looking at the same thing, then that thing will be rendered in the same way (or at least, more or less the same way) for both of us, because the underlying calculations in N-space are the same for everyone. This is equivalent to two computer gamers at separate terminals, each seeing his own rendered version of the VR world in which their avatars are interacting.

There are also realities that are "relatively more valid" than your own … Yours is not a system of reality formed by the most intense concentration of energy, therefore. It is simply the one you are tuned in to, part and parcel of. You perceive it simply for this reason.

Other portions of yourself, therefore, of which you are not consciously aware, do inhabit what you could call a supersystem of reality in which consciousness learns to handle and perceive much stronger concentrations of energy, and to construct "forms" of a different nature indeed.

These other levels of the system would correspond, in our model, to the levels of a computer game. The entire game is run by a single program, but a user can advance from level to level, and the rules and possibilities change from one level to the next.

You are, using an analogy again, sent out by a superself who strongly desired existence in physical form. You are no puppet of this superself. You will follow your own lines of development, and through means far too difficult to explain here, you add to the experience of the superself and also then extend the nature of its reality. You also insure your own development, and you are able to draw upon the abilities of the superself.

Nor will you ever be swallowed by the self that in these terms seems so superior … There is no end to the reality of consciousness, nor the means of its materialization. Nor is there any end to the developments possible for each identity.

This passage ties in with my earlier blog post "Slices of Life." The different "portions of yourself" would correspond to the different slices in the cone indicated in the diagram. All of them exist simultaneously, since the total system exists outside of time as we understand it. The higher self consists of all the various incarnations of the self, which nevertheless have their own personal, unique identities.

Similar ideas are found later in Chapter 7 of Seth Speaks:

While you continue to exist and develop as an individual, your whole self, or soul, has such vast potential, that it can never be expressed fully through one personality ...

You are presently focused not only in your physical body, but within a particular frequency of events that you interpret as time. Other historical periods exist simultaneously, in forms quite as valid; and other reincarnation selves else. Again, you simply are not tuned to those frequencies ...

You are as actively and vividly concerned in those realities as you are in the one in which your main attention is now focused. Now, as you are merely concerned with your physical body and physical self as a rule, you give your attention to the stream of consciousness that seems to deal with it. These other streams of consciousness, however, are connected with other self-forms that you do not perceive. The body, in other words, is simply one manifestation of what you are in one reality, but in these other realities you have other forms.

All of this also seems to fit pretty well with another post of mine, "The Diamond," which stressed the complexity, power, and – for want of a better word – sheer magnificence of the higher self when viewed as a totality. As Seth says in Chapter 6:

Your soul therefore – the soul that you are – the soul that you are part of – that soul is a far more creative and miraculous phenomenon then you previously supposed.

In doing a little research today, I noticed that the Wikipedia pages for Charles Richet and Cesare Lombroso both include the same claim: that each man had a sexual affair with medium Eusapia Palladino. The source of this claim, in both cases, is the book The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero, a sensationalistic volume that also claims Houdini's death was actually a murder plot organized by spiritualists under the direction of Arthur Conan Doyle!

As far as I know, there is no evidence whatsoever that Richet, Lombroso, or any other investigator was romantically involved with Palladino. It is true that Palladino flirted with some of the researchers, but by all accounts her flirtations were not reciprocated. In fact, she seems to have been viewed as rather repulsive by the men who tested her. They mentioned her coarse peasant behavior, her vulgarity and crudeness, her slovenly dress, and, if I recall correctly, her pungent body odor.

Palladino was certainly no Gina Lollobrigida. Here she is:

Is this the face that launched a thousand mediumships?

It seems unlikely to me that Palladino inspired amorous thoughts in the men who worked with her. But then, I don't buy the idea that Arthur Conan Doyle led a conspiracy to murder Houdini, either.

Here are some interesting quotes from Seth Speaks, by Jane Roberts, interpreted in light of some of the ideas explored on this blog. All quotes are from Chapter 6.

As I'm sure most readers know, "Seth" was an entity channeled by Jane Roberts. The channeled material mainly involves issues like the nature of reality, the role of consciousness, and the potentialities of the soul.

The soul or entity is itself the most highly motivated, most highly energized, and most potent consciousness-unit known in any universe. It is energy concentrated to a degree quite unbelievable to you.

You are one manifestation of your own soul.

Many individuals imagine the soul to be an immortalized ego, forgetting that the ego as you know it is only a small portion of the self.

Your soul, therefore, possesses the wisdom, information, and knowledge that is part of the experience of all these other personalities; and you have within yourselves access to this information, but only if you realize the true nature of your reality. Let me emphasize again that these personalities exist independently within and are a part of the soul, and each of them are free to create and develop.

There is however an inner communication, and the knowledge of one is available to any – not after physical death, but now in your present moment. Now the soul itself, as mentioned earlier, is not static. It grows and develops even through the experience of those personalities that compose it, and it is, to put it as simply as possible, more than the sum of its parts.

Now in terms of psychology as you understand it, the soul could be considered as a prime identity that is in itself a gestalt of many other individual consciousnesses – an unlimited self that is yet able to express itself in many ways and forms and yet maintain its own identity, its own "I am-ness," even while it is aware that it's I-am-ness may be part of another I-am-ness.

This ties in nicely with my post "The Diamond," in which I described a meditative exercise. Here's what I wrote:

I was shown an image of a diamond, brilliant and multifaceted. But this was no ordinary diamond. It was alive. The facets, which were far more luminous than any real-life diamond's, were in constant motion. They were constantly shifting positions like the pieces of a mosaic, creating patterns that were intricate and harmonious. It did not appear that there was anything random about these patterns; rather, they seemed to involve the working-out of some larger scheme, much in the way that notes of music can be used to work out the themes and melodies of a musical composition.

I was told that this diamond was my true soul, and that the individual facets were merely contributing elements. The real me, the eternal me, was the diamond as a whole, even though I wasn't aware of it in everyday life.

These living and moving facets each represented some persona that my larger soul had adopted – presumably in some previous (or perhaps future) earthly incarnation. The sum total of all these facets made up the diamond itself.

Let me expand on this a little. The diamond could be seen as the so-called "group soul" often discussed by metaphysical writers. But I was given to understand that the "group soul" is something of a misnomer, because actually we are talking only about a group of personae; the diamond/soul itself is our own personal soul in its purest and highest form. To think of it as a group soul is to imagine that our individual self is just one of the facets of the diamond, when in fact our soul consists of all the facets and more, because it includes the core of the diamond as well. Thus we are much greater, much more all-encompassing, than we might think.

What was most strongly impressed on me was the sheer beauty of the soul. It seemed to me that this soul was the most beautiful and precious thing in the world. Of course, I'm not just talking about my own soul, but about any human soul. The impression I had – and this is where the emotional impact came in – was that if we could only grasp the magnificence and perfection of our own souls, we would have a whole new perspective on life, and negative things (such as the illness I was experiencing) would pale into insignificance.

Again, while I cannot really convey the feeling I got, I came away with an extraordinarily strong impression that our soul – mine, or yours, or anyone's – is an object of exquisite beauty, unfathomable complexity, and ultimate perfection. Even the flaws that we perceive in ourselves are not really flaws, but elements necessary to a larger harmonious whole.

There are many wonderful things in our physical reality, including stars and galaxies, but the impression I got was that each of us, inasmuch as we represent this diamond-like perfection of the soul, is a far more wondrous and valuable thing than any physical object.

Going back to Seth, he continues:

You form physical matter and the physical world that you know. The physical senses actually can be said to create the physical world, in that they force you to perceive an available field of energy in physical terms, and impose a highly specialized pattern upon this field of reality.

There are no real divisions between the perceiver and the things seemingly perceived. In many ways the thing perceived is an extension of the perceiver. This may seem strange, but all acts are mental, or if you prefer, psychic acts.

Your universe is idea construction.

The world that you know is one of the infinite materializations taken by consciousness, and as such it is valid.

The soul's perceptions are not dependent upon time, because time is a physical camouflage and does not apply to nonphysical reality.

This seems to tie in reasonably well with the whole M-space/N-space thing that I've been exploring lately. N-space, the information matrix, is "the available field of energy" that each mind "perceive[s] ... in physical terms." M-space is a kind of reality bubble created by the mind, and therefore "there are no real divisions between the perceiver and the things seemingly perceived," and "all acts are mental." Since every person has his own M-space, "the world that you know is one of the infinite materializations taken by consciousness, and as such it is valid." Space and time are properties of M-space but not of N-space (at least not in the same way), so "time is a physical camouflage and does not apply to nonphysical reality," i.e., to N-space.

I'm not saying Seth's ideas line up perfectly with the ones we've been looking at, but there are some correspondences.

I also wrote up some notes yesterday that may be of interest. I was inspired, in part, by Matt Rouge's comment in earlier thread that an individual personality consists of information and "the I-thought," the latter referring to awareness as such.

Anyway, here's what I jotted down (slightly edited for clarity):

The ego is a constellation of memories, beliefs, and personality traits, all of which can be understood as data or reducible to data. The higher self, by contrast, is awareness or the I-thought.

Facets of the higher self incarnate and acquire ego identification, which persists indefinitely. A given facet ordinarily does not reincarnate. Perhaps in special cases it does – for instance, after a sudden violent death, when the ego feels cheated of a full incarnational experience. The reincarnation of an ego would probably involve wiping the slate clean, which would amount to personal annihilation as far as the ego is concerned, although the higher self would not be affected. Ordinarily, therefore, it is another facet of the higher self that incarnates, but this facet may carry traces of an ego's life experiences because of intra-self communication, something like phase entanglement in quantum physics (by analogy only).

The postmortem ego is always "in" the afterlife, so it can be contacted by mediums even if another facet of the self has incarnated bearing some traces of that ego.

The ego's M-space is consistent, so the sense of having a body is consistent as well. But M-space can be altered more easily after death, as in the example of Howard Storm's near-death experience, in which his M-space was altered by an act of will. The same is probably true of out-of-body experiences, which are explorations of other M-space options.

The egos continue to develop and to acquire a greater sense of the whole. A so-called "group soul" may be a collection of facets within the self. Not necessarily all the facets, just some of them.

The higher self is a dynamic system, evolving in terms of individual egos/facets, group soul(s), and the self as a whole, and the higher self is undoubtedly in communication with other higher selves, perhaps comprising a larger group soul, like nested dolls.

Since the word "ego" has a negative connotation, and since "higher self" is a bit confusing, it might be good to use different terms.

The ego could be the "constructed self."

The higher self could be the "total self" or "oversoul."

A facet that has not yet incarnated could be a "potential self," or (to use plant imagery) a "bud."

I've been reading Norman Friedman's 1997 book The Hidden Domain: Home of the Quantum Wave Function, Nature's Creative Source. One of the interesting things about this book is that Friedman, in addition to relying on standard sources, takes advantage of insights provided by Seth, the discarnate entity channeled by Jane Roberts. Friedman finds Seth's interpretation of ultimate reality to be useful in making sense of subatomic phenomena, which is perhaps noteworthy in light of the common complaint that channeled material never contributes anything to the understanding of science.

Incidentally, the Friedman excerpts presented below do not owe anything to Seth, whose influence comes later in the book. Here, Friedman is relying only on mainstream sources.

Friedman, page 23:

Einstein ... rejected Newton's notion of an absolute space, at rest and immovable, relative to which all objects in the universe are moving. Einstein suggested that this description of space be discarded because any observer, in whatever frame of reference, could say that he or she was at rest at all else was moving relative to them.

M-space, or what we call the "physical world," is a projection of a virtual reality tailored to the point of view of our particular consciousness. Therefore, each of us is the focal point of our own private M-space, and from our point of view, everything else is in motion relative to our fixed vantage point. By analogy, the VR environment of a computer game typically moves relative to the point of view of the user's avatar.

Einstein's original four-dimensional space-time is now understood to be a projection, or a shadow, of a larger higher-dimensional space called the "fiber bundle." The elementary particles and nongravitational forces are then interpreted as geometric structures in the higher dimensions beyond Einstein's space-time.

M-space is a projection or shadow of the larger higher-dimensional N-space. Elementary particles areinterpreted as informational structures in N-space.

Friedman, page 45:

The uncertainty principle leads to the idea that one electron (or any particle) is in principle indistinguishable from any other.

The best comment on this is from Whitworth's essay, linked above:

Quantum equivalence: All quantum entities, like
photons or electrons, are equivalent. Digital equivalence: Every digital "object" created
by the same code must be equivalent.

Or as Whitworth put it in an earlier version of his essay (I'm paraphrasing): Every digital symbol calculated by the same program is identical to every other, just as every photon is identical to every other photon because each is created by the same digital calculation.

Friedman, page 49:

Thus, it would seem that we live in a world of at least two levels: the wave function is on one level and correlates with object of affection in the other level, which is ordinary three-dimensional reality.

N-space, corresponding to the wave function, is one level, and M-space is what we call three-dimensional reality.

Friedman on the two-slit experiment, page 254:

If we duplicate this experimental arrangement throughout the world with many experimenters, each firing just one electron at a given prearranged time, with each individual photographic plate showing the arrival of the one electron, and the results from all the plates are added together, then, amazingly, the interference pattern shows up again! These experiments are arranged so that no signal can travel between them at less than the speed of light, so there can be no physical communication between the electrons. Just how does each electron know where to strike the plate so that in the interference pattern appears?

The electrons know where to strike the plate because the calculations have already been performed in N-space. The fact that the experiments are being carried out in different labs is irrelevant, since N-space is nonlocal. Since it is all one experiment (albeit broken up into different parts), the outcome is determined by a single set of calculations in N-space.

Friedman, page 56:

An explanation for this strange wave-particle duality, called the Copenhagen interpretation, was presented by Bohr in 1927 at the fifth Solvay conference in Brussels. The simplest statement of Bohr's view is this: the quantum world is not real. Bohr recognized that the quantum world is completely different from our normal everyday world governed by the familiar laws of classical physics. Though we have mathematical formalisms to describe it, the unreal world of the quantum relates to the real world only by an act of measurement.

I would prefer to flip this around and say that M-space is not fully real, while N-space – the underlying information realm – is what is ultimately real. However, it depends on how you look at it. The key point is that the two dimensions of "reality" are qualitatively different, and that N-space can be understood only in terms of "mathematical formalisms," which makes sense given that it is a realm of pure information and information processing.

Friedman, page 58:

In classical physics, mathematics is used to represent the attributes of a system. The formulae are taken at face value and assumed to be actual descriptions of the evolution of the system. In quantum theory, the situation is quite different. Here the mathematics is an algorithm for calculating the results of experiments, at least as far as the Copenhagen interpretation is concerned. Actuality is no longer considered, but has evaporated into the mists of the mystical.

I would look at this differently, and say that N-space is the actuality, while our three-dimensional "physical" world is, in a sense, part of the "mists of the mystical" – in the sense that it is a projection of consciousness.

Friedman describes his own point of view on page 62:

It is our thesis that the wave function is not merely a symbol to be used in a calculational procedure. Rather, it has real meaning and describes a hidden domain that is the creative source of our three-dimensional world.

This, unlike the views quoted earlier by Friedman, is essentially the same as the M-space/N-space idea. N-space is the "hidden domain that is the creative source of our three dimensional world," and "is not merely a symbol to be used in a calculational procedure." Rather, the calculational procedures are the basis of what we call reality.

Friedman, footnote on page 64:

Some scientists think the space continuum may actually be grainy, which implies a universal minimum length, usually estimated to be 10 [to the power of] -33 cm. Every gravitational wave in space has a zero-point energy and because of that, the lengths below 10 [to the power of] -33 become undefinable.

The universal minimum length in a virtual-reality universe would correspond to a single pixel on a computer screen, the smallest image that can be displayed. The universal minimum time would correspond to the length of time between screen refreshes.

Friedman, page 68:

We can conjecture that there are two types of time. One type describes a sequence of actual events brought about by the collapsing wave function, which is the time we are aware of in the three-dimensional universe. The other kind of time, used to create space-time in Einstein's relativity theory, refers to the evolution of possibilities in the Schrodinger equation. Since possibilities are not real events, that type has been called imaginary or virtual time.

The "time" that applies to N-space is qualitatively different from the "time" that we proceed in M-space. This is why precognition and retrocognition are possible; these abilities apparently involve tapping into N-space directly.

In what way are the mathematical formulae of N-space "rendered" into the multidimensional, multisensory images of M-space? Friedman discusses how the probabilties of the "hidden domain of the quantum wave function" can be translated into what we know as realities. This is a little complicated, so I will summarize in a series of steps.

1. Schrodinger's equation expresses the quantum wave function as a complex equation, i.e., a mixture of real numbers and imaginary numbers. This wave can be written as a sum of sine waves using Fourier's equations, but the sine waves are also complex functions (with imaginary numbers).

2. Imaginary numbers cannot be plotted as coordinates in physical space. Therefore Schrodinger's equation cannot tell us the location of the subatomic particle in space.

3. Is there any way to convert imaginary numbers into real numbers and thus locate the particle in physical space? Yes. If you multiply an imaginary number by its complex conjugate, the result is a real number.

4. What is the complex conjugate of the quantum wave function? All waves can be understood as "retarded waves," which travel forward in time, and "advanced waves," which travel backward in time. The advanced quantum wave is the complex conjugate of the retarded quantum wave; the product of these two waves gives us a wave function that can be expressed purely in real numbers, and which thus provides us with a location in physical space.

In terms of our scenario, we might think of N-space as consisting of complex equations - a mix of real numbers and imaginary numbers. What we call "rendering" would consist of multiplying these equations by their cognates. The result would be real numbers only, or "physical reality." Note that this process can be understood either in terms of mathematical calculations (multiplication) or wave interactions. N-space, then, could be said to consist of "complex equations" or of "quantum waves" - two different ways of lookingat the same thing. Equations relate better to the computer analogy, while waves relate better to the hologram analogy. The two analogies (or metaphors, or modekls) are very similar, since a hologram can be created entirely by a computer, and since the wave interference patterns on a holographic plate can be translated into data.

Friedman sums up the sequence of steps outlined above, page 73:

The basic tenet of Cramer's transactional interpretation of quantum theory (as it is called) is that every quantum event involves a kind of 'handshake' between the past and the future, so that in some way, the future is affecting the past.

In other words, the retarded wave and the advanced wave "shake hands" across time - something that's hard to visualize in our three-dimensional world (M-space), but easier to understand in the context of N-space, where time behaves differently.

Some additional points made by Brian Whitworth's essay. (The following are not verbatim excepts but paraphrases and abridgements.)

Processing load effects could explain relativity effects. Space and time arise from a fixed information processing allocation, so the sum total of space and time processing adds up to the local processing available.

In other words, time appears to expand and space appears to contract as you approach light speed because the information processing system is reaching the limit of its processing load. (See Whitworth's essay for details.)

The algorithmic simplicity of fundamental physical laws and constants is explained by the needs of the information processing system. In a virtual reality, the basic rules must be simple because they must be constantly calculated and recalculated.

If complementary object properties use the same memory location, the object can appear as having either position or momentum, but not both at once. (See the website The Bottom Layer for a step-by-step discussion of this point.)

In a VR universe, all object movement would be expected to be by state transitions.

Quantum jumps and quantum tunneling are known examples of state transitions - i.e., discontinuous movement, in which a particle shifts its energy level or its position or from one state to another without passing through the intervening state. This is difficult to explain in terms of objective reality, but easy enough to understand if the transitions reflect calculations taking place in N-space. The particle does not need to pass through the intervening states, because it simply shifts from one state to another as a result of a behind the scenes calculation. The new state shows up as soon as the virtual-reality screen is refreshed.

A virtual-reality system may start with a sudden influx of information as the virtual-reality universe boots up. This corresponds to the apparent origin of the universe out of nothing, as posited by the Big Bang theory.

Finally, Whiteworth asks:

Given the speed of light is a universal maximum, what is simpler, that it depends on the properties of featureless space, or that [it] represents a maximum network processing rate?

In this view, the speed of light as an absolute maximum simply indicates the maximum speed at which the information processing system can crunch the numbers. In the M-space/N-space scenario, the limit may also involve the maximum capacity of the render engine. Note that the rendering is done individually for each observer, so the render effects would be apparent only to an observer(s) who was approaching light speed in his particular M-space. The render effects would not be apparent to anyone not approaching light speed, because that person's unique M-space would not be under an unusually high processing load.

I hadn't thought of looking in on the comments thread at the Julian Jaynes Society in a while, but tonight I clicked over there and found that the moderator had posted a lengthy reply to me, regarding "The Story of Sinuhe," an ancient Egyptian document brought to my attention by Doubter.

Apparently the moderator did a little Googling and discovered that - gasp! - I think actual spirit communication is possible. To him, this is mysticism unsupported by any empirical evidence. It seems to have irked him considerably, though I'm not sure why, since the Sinuhe text presents an obvious problem for Jaynes' theory regardless of anyone's motives in bringing it up. In any event, he seems to feel that this evidence of "mysticism" is a sufficient reason to end the discussion.

He does, however, make a few points in defense of Jaynes, mainly in response to comments that he read on this blog. One is that Jaynes didn't really think that his bicameral men were automatons or robots, even though Jaynes did use the term "automatons" to describe them. (Evidently Jaynes came to regret this terminology later in life.) Another is that bicameral men could engage in complex problem-solving and logical, linear thinking (as I've noted myself). Still another is that translations of ancient texts are problematic.

He also takes issue with the claim that primitive peoples studied by anthropologists show no vestiges of bicamerality. Though the moderator does not cite any sources, Jaynes himself, in The Julian Jaynes Collection, cites the anthropologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl, saying that

he set out to show that primitive peoples were very different mentally from ourselves, were governed by "representations" (something like what I call collective cognitive imperatives), and were "pre-logical."... Levy-Bruhl's books are excellent reading for the data they present. These are collections of descriptions of the first meetings of many different primitive peoples with Western observers. [p. 327]

Jaynes implies that a kind of political correctness imposed by Margaret Mead and like-minded anthropologists has led to an under-appreciation, or even a suppression, of Levy-Bruhl's findings.

What struck me about the moderator's long but interesting reply was mainly its tone, which is rather combative. For instance, he labels any viewpoint that he disagrees with as a "false premise." He concludes, "Past experience has shown me that where major false premises exist that have no basis in empirical evidence (i.e. mysticism), people tend to dig in their heels, and the debate continues endlessly." Even though most of the subject matter of this blog involves empirical evidence for psi and life after death, the moderator apparently is quite set in his conviction that no such evidence exists and that people come to such beliefs only because of childhood conditioning. A tad condescendingly he informs us:

We adopt many of our premises and beliefs at a young age, based not on evidence but on the authority of parents and teachers. This mixed bag of accurate and false beliefs becomes part of our worldview and we often fail to reevaluate these beliefs as adults. The only way to root out false beliefs is to methodically re-examine the evidence for all of our existing premises and beliefs. Beliefs not based on objective evidence must then be rejected.

That's all fine, but apparently it hasn't occurred to him that someone could come from a skeptical background, then "methodically re-examine the evidence" and become convinced that some paranormal phenomena are real. This was my experience, and it has been the experience of many other people.

That said, I agree with him that there is not much value in debating issues pertaining to one's basic worldview. That's why I deliberately didn't get into the subject of evidence for the spirit world in my posts on that forum. Besides, it was irrelevant to the subject, which was "The Story of Sinuhe." I figured that if I said anything, even in passing, about the possibility of life after death, it would preempt any discussion of the Sinuhe text. This assumption turns out to have been correct.

Overall, I'm a bit disappointed in the response to my forum postings. Nobody except the moderator bothered to chime in, and even the moderator's remarks seem largely aimed at explaining away a difficult text with boilerplate arguments (unreliable translations, the subtle nuances of Jaynesianism, the need to put aside childish things) rather than tackling the textual problems.

I might have said some of this in a final reply on the forum, but I can't. It appears that immediately after posting his last response, the moderator locked the thread. He explained: "I'm going to take a tip from Michael's blog and take the final word on this subject, at least for now." This may be intended to suggest that my policy is to prevent people from responding to me, but anyone who followed my numerous posts on Jaynes (or any of the debates on this blog) knows this isn't true. Though eventually all old comment threads are locked to prevent an endless infusion of comment spam, I always wait until the conversation has petered out in its own, and I certainly don't "take the final word" by posting something and then peremptorily closing the discussion.

Though a little frustrating, this experience has helped me to see why Jaynes' theory has not gained much traction in the decades since the publication of his magnum opus. Even his most ardent and well-informed supporters don't seem to be too interested in addressing specific, concrete items of evidence that contradict their beliefs. As a result, they fall back on generalized disquisitions on critical thinking, unwarranted assumptions about the motives or knowledge of critics, and stale, boilerplate arguments which they repeat mechanically and by rote ... almost like, er, automatons. It's unlikely that these methods will win wide support for the Jaynesians' controversial and counterintuitive position. Probably this is just as well, though I continue to think that Jaynes' reflections on consciousness as such (as explored in the first part of his book) deserve to be more influential than they are.

Brief report from Germany of a child's NDE. Not much detail is provided, but it's interesting that the boy was so young (only 3 years old), and that he was reportedly "clinically dead" for three hours before being revived.

I came across a site called The Information Philosopher, which rounds up a whole bunch of arguments to support the idea that information is central to reality. I haven't read much of it yet, but I suspect there's some good content there, for those who are interested.

Their position is different from the one we've been exploring here, though. As best I can tell, they think that what I call M-space is objectively real and that information is one of its properties. That's not what I'm saying. But it still looks like there's some interesting stuff there.

First, a trivial and absurd premonition. While lying half awake this morning, I found myself thinking of a scene in the first Naked Gun movie, in which Leslie Nielsen is standing behind Priscilla Presley while she climbs a ladder. It's obvious that, from his vantage point, he can see up her skirt. He whistles and says approvingly, "Nice beaver!" Presley replies, "Thanks. I just had it stuffed." She then hands him a large stuffed beaver.

Making lunch today, I watched an episode of the old sitcom NewsRadio. In the episode, eccentric billionaire Jimmy James has just purchased a box of so-called movie memorabilia, which is actually junk. "This one's from that movie Basic Instinct," he says, and pulls out a large stuffed beaver. (It's a reference to the famous interrogation scene in which Sharon Stone briefly exposes herself.)

So it's basically the same joke. Could I have known about it by normal means? It's possible. The episode is on a DVD, part of the complete series, which I own in that format. (NewsRadio is a sadly underrated sitcom, by the way.) It's been quite a while since I've watched these DVDs, but it's not impossible that, on a subconscious level, I remembered that this particular episode was next in the queue. Certainly I had no conscious knowledge of it; if someone had asked me what the next episode was, I wouldn't have had any idea. The series ran for five seasons, so there must be something like 100 episodes, and I haven't made any effort to keep track of them.

Anyway, for what it's worth, that's my premonition. Notice that my reverie about The Naked Gun took place when I was probably in a mild hypnopompic state – in other words, coming out of sleep and only partly awake. This mental state seems to be particularly conducive to premonitions and other psi activity. It may also be conducive to recalling long-forgotten items such as the next episode of a TV show on a DVD. Who knows?

From beavers to the universe is a long jump, and there's no good segue for it, so I'll just proceed. Last night I was thinking about Robert Anton Wilson's book The New Inquisition, which I discussed in a couple of previous posts. I was trying to make sense of the ideas he puts forward about our tendency to create "reality tunnels" through which we selectively view and experience the world. The problem I had with this idea is that it seems to lead to pure subjectivism, a.k.a. solipsism. If we each experience our own subjective world, how can there ever be any objectivity or any grasp of reality as such?

The whole question of the distinction between the objective and subjective was bothering me anyway. As I said in my last post, it seems as if this distinction can lead to stress and anxiety because of the sense of separation it implies. Wilson, in his book, says much the same thing. Some kind of unity of the objective and the subjective would seem to solve the problem, but I couldn't think of any way to unify them. We know for sure that there is such a thing as subjectivity. If we eliminate the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity, we seem to be left with subjectivity alone.

Then I thought about an idea we've discussed quite often on this blog – that the underlying reality of our world is a field of pure information, a cosmic database combined with a vast information processing system. By analogy, this informational substrate is similar to the code that underlies a virtual-reality environment in a computer game. Just as the virtual reality of the game reduces ultimately to ones and zeros – pure information – so the apparently real world around us in all its dimensions may reduce ultimately to pure information.

This raises an obvious question: what renders the information to generate our "real" world? After all, the data in the computer would just sit there, useless for game-playing purposes, unless the computer was able to render the data as images and sounds. By what means do we render our world?

One possible answer is: our minds. Not our brains, please note; our brains are physical objects and thus are part of the rendered, multidimensional, multisensory imagery we call reality. It is our minds that (just possibly) translate the informational code into the world of experience.

Let's suppose this is true. If the mind is what does the rendering, then each individual mind renders its own "virtual-reality" world out of the same information matrix. And each "world" will be slightly different from all the others, because it will depend on our particular point of view – our focus, our choice of what to tune in to and what to ignore.

Here I'm going to introduce a little jargon. Let's call the information matrix N-space. The N stands for noumenal, or, if you prefer, number. (It works either way.) And let's call our individual, personal, subjective world M-space, with M standing for mind. We all live in our own M-space, and we are all rendering N-space in order to generate our M-space.

Notice that neither of these things is really "space" in any physical sense. We might think of them as fields or matrices. However we wish to describe them, both N-space and M-space are nonphysical.

So each mind renders its own "real" world, but all minds draw from a common source – the N-space database/information processor. Mind somehow takes pure information and translates it into an experiential world, which is subjective but grounded in objective data. By objective, I mean N-space exists independent of the observer; by subjective, I mean M-space exists only in respect to the observer.

We have, then, three aspects of reality: N-space, which is pure information and information processing; M-space, which is reality as each of us subjectively experiences it; and the mind, which serves to render N-space into M-space.

If there is a place for God in this scheme, God would be seen as a kind of primal or cosmic mind, which wrote the code that constitutes N-space. Our own minds would presumably be small offshoots or rivulets of this larger mind.

Now here, to me, is the really interesting thing. In this scenario, there is no physical space at all.

There is N-space, which is a nonphysical matrix of data, and there is M-space, which is subjective experience, and there is the mind – which, whatever it is, is not physical.

So there is no physical space or physical world. There is only information rendered by various minds into subjective virtual realities for purpose of creative exploration.

We might visualize M-space as a thought bubble in a comic strip. And we might visualize all the M-spaces of humanity as a vast froth of bubbles on the surface of a dark sea. On the seafloor, hidden from sight, there is N-space, the source of it all.

Matter and energy are rendered from data. Data are nonphysical. The minds that do the rendering are also nonphysical. The resulting rendered "images" appear to be physical, but they are only experiential constructs, the equivalent of avatars and icons on a computer screen, or the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave.

Now, is this pure subjectivism, i.e., solipsism? I don't think so, because all minds render their virtual realities from the same database/information processing system.

In other words, we can retain the distinction between objective and subjective in this scheme. While the objective/subjective distinction breaks down in terms of M-space, it applies, in a somewhat different way, to the interaction of the mind and N-space. As mentioned above, N-space is objective in the sense that it is independent of the observer, while M-space is subjective in that it is dependent on the observer.

So we can still talk about objective reality, but what we're talking about is not M-space – our personal experience – but N-space, the information matrix that serves as the ground of being.

It would seem that people who have had epiphanies – e.g., the "cosmic consciousness" episodes recounted by Richard Maurice Bucke, or many near-death experiences, or deathbed visions – have been able to temporarily break out of M-space and tap into N-space directly. They often feel they were exposed to all knowledge, which would be the case if N-space constitutes all the data and programming that underlie what we call "the world." But they cannot retain most of the details when they return to ordinary consciousness, because they are back in M-space again.

It is probable that many psychic events take place because the mind is able to tap into N-space in a small way and access the "code" directly. N-space, being nonphysical, is also nonlocal; information that is readily accessible in the matrix may pertain to physically distant "objects," just as information in a computer may pertain to objects in any part of the screen. So remote viewing (clairvoyance), telepathy, precognition, and other seemingly unthinkable abilities become quite possible.

Another thing: to conserve processing power, computer programs do not render images that are not on the screen. If you are playing a computer game and looking "north" at a mountain, the computer will render the mountain in all its detail. But it will not render the city that is directly behind you, to the "south." If you turn to face south, the computer will obediently render the city on the screen, but it will no longer render the mountain. In a virtual-reality environment, to be is to be perceived, as Bishop Berkeley liked to say.

Does this mean that in the "real world," mountains and cities disappear if you're not looking at them? Here is my answer: they do disappear from your particular reality bubble, your personal, subjective M-space. Your mind is not rendering those particular data at that moment. However, if the mountain or city is being observed by some other mind, then it is rendered in that mind's M-space. Moreover, the data that are the ultimate constituents of the mountain or city always exist in N-space independent of any observer.

So, in the words of the old question, does the moon disappear if no one is looking at it? In this scenario, if literally nobody – no mind anywhere – is observing the moon, then the moon is not currently being rendered in anybody's M-space, and in that sense it has "disappeared." But the data that give rise to the moon in the first place, the data of N-space, are still there and are ready to be rendered by any mind at any time. So the moon is still there in N-space, but it is not presently being rendered in any M-space.

I'm not, of course, insisting that all this is true, or that there is any way of testing it or proving it. But I find it interesting to think about. And it may provide some kind of model by which to understand anomalous phenomena a little better.

And you never know. Maybe someone will read it and, like Leslie Nielsen, say: "Bingo!"

Here's a brief excerpt from The New Inquisition, by Robert Anton Wilson, followed by some thoughts.

The ghastly acceleration of violent, inexplicable and seemingly "pointless" crimes by Right Men in this century – and their hideous magnification into mass murders and war crimes by Right Men in governments – indicate the prevalence of this type of self-hypnosis and what Van Vogt calls "the inner horror" that accompanies it. This "inner horror" is a sense of total helplessness combined with the certainty of always being Right. It seems paradoxical, but the more totally Right a man becomes, the more helpless he also becomes. This is because being Right means "knowing" (gnosis) and "knowing" is understanding The "Real" Universe. Since The "Real" Universe is, by definition, "objective" and "outside us" and "not our creation," we are made puny by it. We cannot act but only re-act – as The "Real" Universe pushes us, we push back. But it is bigger, so we will lose eventually. Our only defense is in being Right and fighting as dirty as possible.

This, I think, is in succinct form the philosophy of Adolf Hitler. It is the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade, and of any rapist or thug you can find in any prison in the world. Where Single Vision reigns – where The "Real" Universe is outside us and impersonal – this shadow-world of violence and horror follows in its wake. [Chapter 8; pp.225, 226; all emphases in original]

When I read this, I was reminded of an interesting experience I had a few years ago. I was about to travel across country, changing planes at a major hub – either Dallas or Houston, I forget which. At the time, I would get nervous and uncomfortable in large, crowded places like airports, so I wasn't looking forward to that part of the trip.

Shortly before I left, I read some comments on this blog to the effect that it's difficult to know what is meant by something "existing" if that thing is not capable, even in principle, of ever being perceived by any mind. For instance, suppose there were a parallel universe that could never be observed by any consciousness whatsoever – neither mortal consciousness nor divine consciousness, nor any other type. In what sense could it be said to "exist" at all?

Whether or not this is meaningful to you, I found it fascinating – kind of like a Zen koan. It inspired me to try a little experiment on my trip. Instead of looking at the things around me as external, objective happenings and facts, I would look at them as creations of my own consciousness, or at least as things brought into existence in part by the active participation of my consciousness. To put it more simply, I would try to see the airport not as something that contained me, but as something that was contained within me; not as something outside from and apart from myself, but as an extension of myself.

The result? I had little or no anxiety during the trip. Somehow, looking at things from this perspective eliminate the nervousness I had expected to feel.

Now, this could, of course, be chalked up to a placebo effect (whatever exactly that means) or simple distraction. Distraction is a highly effective technique when dealing with anxiety.

But it's also possible that I was tapping into the kind of thing Wilson is talking about. As long as I saw the external world as distinct from me, I created a "me against the world" situation, in which I was bound to be overwhelmed and to eventually lose. I was, in the words of the famous poem which Wilson cites in the same chapter, "a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made." As soon as I switched to a different viewpoint, seeing the world not as external and distinct but as (at least to some degree) internal and incorporated into my own being, this sense of separation vanished – and with it, the sense of opposition and its concomitant anxiety and dread.

Given the rising tide of anxiety problems and related issues in the modern world, it's worth considering Wilson's suggestion that the hard-line split between objective and subjective, with its resultant isolation of the individual from other people and from the universe generally, encourages a kind of existential angst.

This may also explain why the interpretation of quantum mechanics that sees human observation as an integral part of the process – an interpretation that is by no means accepted by all physicists – has proven so popular with non-physicists. To the extent that it dissolves the wall between objective and subjective, it may help to ease the angst so characteristic of the developed world. Meanwhile, those physicists who are committed to a left-brain-dominant, Right Man mindset may find this idea particularly unappealing and go to great lengths to discredit it.

(Which is not to say that this interpretation of QM is necessarily correct, only that the arguments for and against may be colored by emotional needs to a surprising extent.)

As described in the last post, the Right Man (a term coined by A.E. Van Vogt) is the individual who simply must be right and cannot bear to be proved wrong. For such a person, losing face is the worst imaginable prospect, and he will go to any lengths to avoid it.

As I see it, the key characteristic of such a person is his need for certainty, and its corollary: intolerance of ambiguity. To be Right, the Right Man must know without a doubt what is true and what is false, in all cases, at all times. This means that he must know how things are - how the universe works, what the laws of nature are, and what may or may not be possible.

In his book The New Inquisition, which I'm reading now, Robert Anton Wilson gives numerous instances of this attitude as it relates to what he calls Fundamentalist Materialists (as distinct from liberal materialists, who are open to new ideas). The good people of CSI, formerly CSICOP, are prime examples of Fundamentalist Materialism; as Wilson acidly observes, they know that parapsychologists, who witnessed paranormal phenomena personally, are wrong, even without setting foot in any parapsychology lab or performing any experiments of their own, because they already know what is and is not possible. Thus any deviation from "the laws of nature" (which are fully understood and immutable) is ruled out of court a priori. And so we find, for instance, James Randi declaring that a certain alleged poltergeist manifestation is fraudulent, even without entering the house in which it was taking place, while the people in the house, including apparently neutral witnesses, must be deluded or lying.

Wilson further notes that the history of science in the 20th century, in which numerous fundamental certainties were overruled by new discoveries, ought to give one pause and provide grounds for some humility. But not so among the Right Men, the Fundamentalist Materialists (who often are not scientists themselves, but more like science enthusiasts). Why is this? It's because the Right Man has to be right, and therefore cannot tolerate or even conceive of the possibility of being wrong; and since he must be right, he must know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Anyone who sees things differently is a threat and must be dismissed out of hand as a liar, a crank, or a deluded naif.

In the past I've often talked about people with rigid opinions feeling that their woldview is threatened, but I think the Right Man syndrome provides a new and slightly different angle on the problem. Worldview is actually secondary; what really matters to the Right Man is not his theoretical stance on the nature of reality, but the fact that it is his stance. Under other circumstances, with a different upbringing, he might have had a very different worldview, but he would still be a Right Man, and would be just as certain of whatever he believes.

We can see some confirmation of this in those prominent skeptics who began as religious fundamentalists. Martin Gardner is one such case. Gardner was raised as a conservative Christian and proselytized for his faith in his early years; later he rejected Christianity and became a skeptic of nearly all things supernatural or paranormal, though he did retain a belief in a deistic creator, which set him apart from most of his fellow skeptics. His specific worldview changed (early enough that it was not set in stone), but the mentality that gave rise to it persisted for a lifetime. More than anyone else, he defined the tone of modern skepticism: relentless mockery and derision directed at anything that challenges the status quo. As Colin Wilson once quipped, "I wish I could be as sure of anything as Martin Gardner is of everything." In spite of his apparent self-confidence, Gardner refused to participate in debates; the Right Man, awash in insecurities masked by bravado, can collapse when challenged - as did Rush Limbaugh, another Right Man, in an early attempt at hosting a TV show, during which the audience's hostile reaction to his views brought on a torrent of flop sweat (at the link, see the paragraph beginning "Limbaugh's debut...").

We can also see the Right Man syndrome exemplified by the thinking of many CSI-style skeptics in regard to non-paranormal issues. It is not unusual for such folks to be equally sure of themselves in other areas - for instance, global warming. Thus we see Susan Blackmore, the British skeptic, penning a wild-eyed op-ed piece predicting the imminent doom of civilization because of climate change. ("In all probability billions of people are going to die in the next few decades.... Britain looks set to be one of the few places on earth that might remain habitable for some time.") We see James Randi endorsing eugenics and social Darwinism; when told by interviewer Will Storr that such views are the foundation of fascism, he shrugs off the objection. Fascism is not necessarily distasteful to the Right Man, as long as he and his equally right-minded friends are in charge. And they do assume they will be in charge, because the Right Man always assumes he is - or should be - running the show.

It seems to me that for many Right Men, their thinking ossifies in college. Because they wish to be seen as unchallengeable authority figures, they have an exaggerated respect for authority in general, a respect bordering on uncritical worship. Their professors may be the first really powerful intellectual authorities they've encountered, and the experience makes a lifelong impression on them. For the Right Men, whatever they learned in college is true, full stop. They seldom or never revise opinions established in this stage of life, which means they are always engaged in a rearguard action, defending views that were current during their formative intellectual years. This is why, as Max Planck quipped, science makes progress one funeral at a time, and also why, as Arthur C. Clarke observed, "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

The worshipful attitude toward authority may be one reason why so many Right Men gravitate toward science, which enjoys the highest status as a source of authoritative pronouncements in the modern world, at least in the West. Another reason is that the hard sciences appeal to highly left-brain-dominant individuals, and such people typically have strong egos. Or maybe I should not say "strong," since their egos are in fact remarkably fragile; what I mean is, such people are ego-dominated to an unusual extent.

In any event, it is fascinating to see how so many self-proclaimed skeptics, freethinkers, and independent minds exhibit a slavish enthrallment to the pronouncements of science, or perhaps I should say, Science. Even the most weakly supported and seemingly far-fetched hypotheses, like Richard Dawkins' "memes" or the Just-so Stories of evolutionary psychology or the proliferating universes of Many Worlds Theory, are sometimes treated almost as oracular revelations. At the very least, such claims are afforded deep and respectful seriousness by those who wish to be part of the scientific fraternity - a seriousness entirely lacking from their consideration of evidence for (say) ESP, even though it is much better supported. The authorities of Science have decided, by executive fiat, what is to be taken seriously and what is to be mocked; and the Right Men (many of whom, remember, are not actually scientists but only science groupies) nod in approval of all such proclamations. To do otherwise would be to question authority; and where authority can be questioned, the Right Man's own peculiar authority may well come under attack. This catastrophe must be forestalled at any cost.

I don't mean to suggest that all Right Men fall into the Fundamentalist Materialist camp. It may be true that all Fundamentalist Materialists are Right Men, but the contrary is not true: all Right Men are not Fundamentalist Materialists. Some are aggressively and self-righteously "spiritual." We see this most obviously in gurus, preachers, and New Age channelers who demand absolute obedience from their flocks. Sylvia Browne, the TV psychic, strikes me as having pretty obvious Right Man qualities; despite a history of failed predictions and other misfires, she will not admit to being wrong, and she lashes out blindly and stupidly when challenged (see the above link, specifically the paragraph about her name-dropping of Stephen Xanthos on Larry King's show). Other Right Men may not fall clearly into either the materialist or spiritualist camp; Ayn Rand, for instance, was not a materialist (despite her atheism), but she was certainly a Right Man - or in this case, a Right Woman - who not only insisted that her answers, and only hers, were the right ones, but who founded a quasi-cult that is largely a cult of personality grounded in her own infallibility. She also showed an unhealthy attraction to the Right Man type in her journal entries and, of course, in her fiction, where her "ideal man" seldom or never exhibits doubts or inner conflicts, and never changes his mind on fundamental issues. Indeed, Rand (who numbered herself among the three greatest philosophers in history, the others being Aristotle and Aquinas) boasted that she had held the same philosophy since childhood and had never seen the need to revise her broad conclusions, though she'd had to adjust some details. She also boasted, inaccurately, that she had achieved her considerable success entirely on her own, and that no one had ever helped her. Every Right Man is an island.

The Right Man is an alpha male, and as such he appeals to those beta males (and beta females) who look for "leadership." This is highly unfortunate, because it means that the rulers of political systems throughout history have largely been a succession of Right Men - rigid, intolerant, unyielding, closed-minded - the kind of people who, like Shakespeare's Henry V, plunge whole nations into war over a quarrel about tennis balls or, like Swift's Lilliputian kings, over eggs. To a greater or lesser degree, nearly all people in leadership positions exhibit unmistakable Right Man qualities. To give a contemporary example, I recall seeing an interview with Barack Obama when he was running for president in 2008. The interviewer asked the candidate if he ever doubted himself. Obama grinned smugly and replied, "Never." Many people no doubt thought this was a highly satisfactory answer; clearly Obama himself was pleased with it. I thought it signaled trouble. A person who never doubts himself is a person who is liable to make mistakes and - worse - not know it or acknowledge it. Perhaps we're seeing the results of such an attitude in the floodtide of scandals presently engulfing the administration. Personally, I would have been much more comfortable if Obama had answered, "Sure, I doubt myself sometimes. I think it's healthy to have some perspective on yourself, and unhealthy to be too absolutist in your thinking." But this is an answer no Right Man could give, and quite possibly, an answer that would strike many voters as weak and spineless. "If he doubts himself, how can he stand up to _______?" they would ask. (Fill in the blank with the enemy of the moment: the Republicans, the bankers, Al Qaeda, Vladimir Putin, China, Zionism, the 1%, etc., etc.)

One other characteristic of Right Man thinking is an all-or-nothing attitude. For this reason, I want to make it clear that I'm not saying that people can be readily divided into Right Men, who are entirely rigid in their thinking, and the rest of us, who are entirely flexible. Life would be simpler if such were the case, but it is not. In fact, it is the furthest thing possible from the truth. All of us have some Right Man traits; and probably all Right Men have some areas in which their habitual rigidity is relaxed. It's more a question of emphasis. The Right Man is typically closed-minded and rigid, even if he may surprise us occasionally by being open to a new idea; the opposite sort of person is typically open-minded, though he will surely surprise us by proving rigid and dogmatic in a few areas. We all have our blind spots and prejudices.

Though the Right Man syndrome is useful in examining history, politics, and intellectual disputes, it is perhaps most useful as a corrective to our own tendencies toward hubristic overreach. In other words, rather than looking primarily for the Right Man in others, we might start by looking for him in the mirror. If we look hard enough, we may see him glaring back.